An Alaska couple found their cat after their house was washed away during a town flood.
Elizabeth Wilkins and Tom Schwartz were away on a trip when a major Suicide Basin water release eroded the riverbank near their house.
The Mendenhall Glacier-dammed lake in Juneau spread out and flooded the area, causing the house to collapse into the water on Aug. 5.
Wilkins and Schwartz described how friends and neighbors called and sent the video warning of the damage.
The couple’s black and white cat Leo was inside the home at the time, but they didn’t give up hope.
Wilkins said, “I knew that he’s pretty smart, and so I felt pretty confident that he would escape and be OK somewhere.”
The couple returned home three days after the flood and began their search for Leo.
They left food out for him and went around town. Soon neighbors began seeking the cat, too.
Wilkins noted plenty of people spotted black and white cats but none of them were hers.
Then, nearly a month later, Tonya Mead posted to the Juneau Community Collective Facebook page noting that she had seen the cat.
Wilkins stated, “I just started walking down the street calling for him, and he just ran out and was like, ‘Oh, hey, here I am, you know, like, where have you been?”
“Leo was a little thinner, but otherwise totally fine,” she went on.
She added, “He ate four cans of tuna and went outside to kill a mouse. I imagine that is how he survived.”
Wilkins noted people have been recovering belongings from the flood, but that finding her cat was a community effort.
